An Author's Guide to Social Media Part 3 of 6: Social Media Accounts to Have

Part III: Instagram

Biography:

In your biography, you should have a link to your personal website. If you do not have a website, you can link your social media biographies to your author page on either Deeds or Goodreads. Since biographies can be easily and quickly edited, this is another good way to promote sales. For example, if you were promoting a certain book throughout the course of the week, you could put a link to purchase the book from Amazon or Deeds in your bio.

Book covers:

The first aspect of marketing a book is its cover! An engaging cover can catch the eye of a potential reader and persuade him or her to learn more about your book. Post the covers of your book to your account, and include a brief (40-50 words) synopsis of the book in the caption. Additionally, you can direct people to buy the book by including the purchase link in your biography.

Pictures from events:

Have a friend or family member attend your events and take photos of you “in action.” This includes book signings, festivals, parties, book launches, awards ceremonies, etc. Have someone capture moments of you physically signing your book, shaking the hand of another author, giving a speech at a lectern, or interacting with your readers and fans. Personalizing your account promotes you as an author as well as your book. Be sure to update the location of your image to reflect where the event took place; photos can also be sorted based on geotags.

Hashtags:

Hashtags on Instagram work much like hashtags on Twitter. Hashtags are the pound signs (#) you see before a word that users embed into Instagram captions. These tags help Instagram identify what’s popular, or trending, at the time. They also help organize pictures. For instance, many people create a unique hashtag for wedding guests to use when uploading and sharing pictures to Instagram. By searching the tag, the bride and groom can access all the pictures taken and shared in one place. Organizing your photos by hashtag can help people identify where you’ve been and what you’ve done.

On Instagram, it’s okay to use more than three hashtags. As with Twitter, don’t overdo it, but as long the hashtags you post are relevant to your photo, it’s okay. On Instagram, hashtags can be an incredibly effective tool to attract followers that don’t know you or your work.